


Temple Guests

by aMAXiMINalist



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: A Gathering, Clone Wars era, Dynamic between Whills Guardians and Jedi, Gen, Jedha, Kyber Temples, Rogue One - Freeform, Star Wars rebels - Freeform, The Clone Wars - Freeform, old republic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-02 23:44:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10955202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aMAXiMINalist/pseuds/aMAXiMINalist
Summary: Guardians of the Whills were the hosts. There was one chamber in the Temple of Kyber they could not enter.Today, it was the usual. A Master and Apprentice. A Depa Billaba and Caleb Dume.





	Temple Guests

**Temple Guests**

The air smelled of bacta, a Jedi Master is closer. It's the Masters that always smelled like perpetual baptism in the opulent healing liquid.

Chirrut rose, tapping his cane once and bowing his head, in reverence to the special visitors.

They were host to the adventurous scholars and the commoners pilgrims in search of enlightenment. And the revered peacekeepers.

The Temple was opened to all, but there was one chamber in the underground, in which no scholar, no pilgrim, no Guardian could enter.

It had no door, and judging from the lack of heat and Baze's testimony, it was just a dark hole in the wall.

It was not the archaic time where Jedi Masters sat and awaited their Padawans to exit safely but prepare for the possibility of their Padawans never returning. Chaperones at Temple were now the safeguards. When Padawans failed, Masters failed, and were doomed to languish in the Temple. But that was ancient time. Temples now had additional Jedi on standby, ready to escort them out.

At the Jedha's Temple of the Kyber, Guardians of the Whills were the Jedi's chaperone, the "safety ropes for Jedi," as the Guardians preached.

Today, it was the usual, a smell of dense residue bacta, a Master who has known war, coming closer. And the lighter footsteps of a younger entity, an Apprentice, following behind. This was common. Padawans typically did not match their Master's beats of the footsteps, they always seemed to be behind, perhaps gawking at the patterns of cracks in its walls.

"Why not Illum, like the others?" The Apprentice had inquired.

Chirrut thought of other temples, seeping winds, vibrations of the Force Jedha couldn't give, and temples without Guardians and temples with only Jedi.

"Every youngling or Padawan goes through a different Gathering. Some get assigned to Jedha's Temple." 

Chirrut had lost count of the Jedi and their students. 

A heavy footstep approached the pair of Jedi.

Baze.

"Trespassers. Only those the Force deems worthy will be let in."

"You will let us in." The boy ordered with solid commitment and the flap of his sleeves. He was playing along with Baze's joke, though Baze would be too strong-minded to deal with even a real Mind Trick, as it would be defined.

"Show me your magic, Jedi." What Baze was asking, even if joking, was tabooed. Guardians never ask Jedi to do tricks for them. It was strange Code rooted in the veneration of humility (yet another word, not in the creed, but in the understanding). Baze, loyal as he was, always bended customs, not to the length of being a total maverick, but enough he could be.

"Caleb, don't."

He felt the kid's chuckle, not unlike Jedha orphans' snickering, a laugh that usually precluded mischief.

A _pop_ on leather. Did the kid punch Baze's shoulder? 

Baze responded with a hearty laugh.

"Young Dume, we have a code to follow."

"What code? The _Code_?" he enunciated it, "Or some code I haven't been taught yet."

"Guardians of the Whills have a code we follow on Jedha sacred grounds," the Master replied.

A wind of a hand dropping. No trick, no showcase of the Force. 

"Would my saber be enough to render us Jedi?"

Baze chuckled, "Go and pass. Welcome, Master and student. Whatever the Temple has for you... I hope it suits you well." He heard the shifting of Baze's shoulders, a shrug, aloof to whatever treasures the Force would bestow for the Jedi.

And the Jedi pair disappeared, their steps and flutter of tunics, swallowed into an abyss that Guardians stood by without entering. The Force called, not to Chirrut, but to its occupants in the abyss, to the vibrations of footsteps. Chirrut placed one hand on the doorway--that was as far as he ever tried "entering"--to track the Master and Apprentice.

Whenever Jedi vanished, they either floated upstairs, sunk down, turned, whispered at a dead end, muttered through a labyrinth. 

Chirrut stirred his staff on the gravel in circles. 

Today, the Jedi were sinking.

Chirrut did not stop drawing runes on the floor. 

The Master faded. The boy sunk. Then the Jedi ceased to be in his radar, no more vibrations.

The rune ended with the punctuation of a _tap_.

That was his signal to Baze. He could no longer feel the Jedi.

"Hmmmmm, I bet they're gonna be gnawed on by some creatures, a wampa. Or they'll find themselves on something icy, like that Ilum."

They both heard the stories, the masters and their apprentices exiting, mouths full of interesting stories, how creatures pursued their flesh, meetings with their own long-lost parents, a shadow that could be a Sith, trials of ice and fire. Everyone survived with different narratives. Baze's favorite story was of a Padawan who used a blaster to overpower an assailant, not by ever firing the gun, but by slamming it physically on the assailant's skull, which cracked open to reveal a Kyber crystal.

There was thankfully never a time where Chirrut and Baze, as outside chaperones, had to venture in for lost Jedi. 

Twenty minutes. No vibrations.

"This will be the day. They won't rise. We'll have to come after them."

Dark joke. "Baze, do not curse this for the Jedi." He drummed his fingers on the doorway. 

The rule was, if the Jedi do not return by dusk, they would have to venture into the dark and be their safety ropes. That was the only time they were allowed to follow Jedi.

An estimable forty minutes transpired--four hours was the longest Jedi have been gone--and then Chirrut tapped his staff three times for Baze's ears. The Temple's womb was opening.

Master and an Apprentice will make their homecoming to their Coruscant Temple after all. No Jedi ever needed to be followed. They just needed to be waited on.

The boy emerged first, with the twinkle of energy in his palm.

After ten seconds--Chirrut counted--the Master followed the boy, right behind him, the scent of bacta radiating and stinging.

"Will it be green or blue, Master?" Green. Blue. He couldn't reminder what green and blue were, but the vocabulary themselves sounded like a bizarre chord to his ears.

"We will see, Dume."

Then a shift of a head.

"Goodbye." The woman said. And a bow.

"See you." Baze said. What a strange tick he gave to every young Jedi visitor. Will he really see that young Jedi again? Perhaps if that Jedi ever had his Padawan, maybe. Chirrut had hoped for the day where a Master might say, "I recall your face when I walked here as a Padawan."

A whip of the braid. "See you." Echoed the younger boy.

He bowed back to the Master. He also felt the boy bow at him too, the whip of a braid. He could detect Baze from the distance, reciprocating even if they did not face him.

Then a moment, something that burned upon Chirrut whenever he walked in public Jedha square. The boy  was examining the planes of his eyes. Didn't offend him, lots of younglings and the newcomer orphans of Jedha gave him that stare. He was used to feeling that bizarre attempt at eye contact.

To defuse the intensity, Chirrut held out his hand, a beckon for a handshake. When the boy's hand landed upon his, a sudden instinct compelled him to mutter,

"Good fortune, young Jedi." In spite of the training callouses on the boy's hand, Chirrut had shaken the hands of hundreds of Jedi, humans and humanoids and aliens, to know that this hand was too unblemished. The boy had yet to be immersed in the opulent healing liquid rare on Jedha. 

"May the Force be with you."

The Jedi's footsteps moved away.

"What did you see in the Temple, Dume?"

"Nothing."

"Really? Nothing as in, something you don't want me to hear? Or nothing in the literal definition?"

"No, really, pitch black." Hah, that's what Chirrut always saw. No challenge for the kid. He wanted to throw off a quip, maybe call out a "Ha, me too" to supplement the humor, but Guardian etiquette called them to be silent in Jedi matters, though an eavesdrop wouldn't be against the rules.

"I was dodging lasers. That I couldn't even see. But it became a cinch. I heard a voices, a woman's voice, thought it could've been you, I thought it was a trick or a trap, so I ignored her, but then I ran toward her. I knew she didn't exist. But it was like she needed me. Or I needed her. Then everything smelled like an alleyway. I didn't know whether I could trust that voice. But I decided to take the risk. That's when everything felt less cold and I followed the warmth, like a game of hot and cold. Then,  I couldn't see it, but she drew her hand toward me. So I reached for her hand. And my hand found a Kyber crystal."

"Quite a journey, Dume." As usual, the Padawan takes a pause, but the Master walks ahead.

"Then light... But why all that darkness to get through to the light?" The kid caught up, his footsteps synchronizing with hers. "I mean, I see why, get through dark times to get to light, duh, but what's _your_ interpretation, Master?"

They matched beats. "Are you looking for a better answer, Dume?"

He could detect the paused intensity in the Master. No one needed the Force to feel it. He could reach out and pocket the withhold of the Master's breath, what a souvenir.

"Caleb, about the darkness you saw, or the stranger who reached out to you, I can't know for sure, what I believe is..."

Then the Master's answer, or speculation, for her Apprentice dissolved into a mumble. The pair of Jedi drifted too far, their language beyond the comprehensibility of his ears, their footsteps teetering off the precipice of a memory. The Jedi had gone dark.


End file.
